


Pavlovian Man

by karanguni



Series: A Few Good Men [2]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, random guest appearances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 00:06:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1760299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The bartender, who didn’t know him, had poured him a drink by the time Tseng settled at the far side of the bar. 'I don't want any trouble,' he informed Tseng frankly, setting the glass down in front of the Turk.</p><p>'Fortunately for you,' Tseng said, lifting the glass, 'I do want scotch.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pavlovian Man

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by elementalsight. Part of an attempt to get more [filthydirty Tseng](http://karanguni.tumblr.com/tagged/where-is-my-filth) out into the world.

Summer nights under the Plate were, perhaps surprisingly, cooler than summer nights sector-side. Tseng was, consequently, in the slums. He did not blend in. The average under-Plate citizen wore an uniform of t-shirts and pants with as many pockets as needed to confuse the ubiquitous thieves that casually fished for wallets along the main drags. Tseng wore a suit cut so close to his skin that it whispered, wool murmuring against slick white cotton, every time he moved. His was a clean, dark, curated black blazer; the kind engineered to show dirt, not to hide it. He wore a tie like the calling card it was. Tseng didn’t need to blend in.

He stood, quiet and unobtrusive, by the open door of the church and watched Aerith work.

'You haven't been by in a while,' she talked at him, busy moving dirt from one side of the floorboards to the other. Tseng didn't try to help, but nor did comment on the futility of the act. It was a balancing game.

'I haven't had reason to,' he told her.

Aerith looked up at him. ‘No,’ she said, smiling a little. It was a sad smile. ‘You haven’t been around because it’s the anniversary of when Zack… Isn’t it?’

Tseng shrugged, the motion making the back of his blazer catch against the badly splintered doorjamb. He took the blazer off and dusted it off. Aerith turned back to her flowers. ‘You’re a good person, Tseng,’ she told him, picking a few stalks of lavender and tying them together with a ribbon she took from her hair. She walked over and offered them to him.

Tseng took the small bouquet in hand and thought, idly, back to the days when Veld had him study flowers just so that he’d be able to understand what the stream of floral arrangements that inevitably wound up at Shinra events meant. Small, ironic messages always filtered through, like a wreath of hazel and hyacinths — both requests for forgiveness — sent along by an errant business partner upon repayment of a loan.  It’d been equivalent to learning an entire language spoken only by the bored and privileged; a language especially rare considering that flowers were near impossible to find in Midgar.

Lavender, Tseng vaguely recalled, lavender for mistrust. It made him quirk his lips. ‘I’m not a good man,’ he corrected Aerith gently. ‘I’m a practical man.’

'Really?' she said, looking up at him. She had lovely eyes. 'Then why do you still visit?'

She had a point. Tseng lifted the bouquet briefly up into the air, and turned to go.

'You could leave Shinra,' she called out after him.

'Perhaps grow some carnations,' he called back as he walked away. 'Striped ones.'

By the time Tseng’d walked from sector 5 over to sector 6, the lavender stalks had long been crushed underfoot by any number of passers-by. Merging into the crowds of the market slums was a rank, noisy, and calming affair. Neon lights blazed overhead in an imitation of starlight as Tseng cut a small, conspicuously easy line past several restaurants, pachinko parlours, bars. It was his hunting ground, an urban playground he’d been trained to slide through since before he knew what his training was really meant for. Tseng knew all the sidestreets and all the whores; he knew how to listen for the unseen, how to sit at barcounters until people forgot you were there, how to call a place like this home. Tseng had more gil in his accounts than he’d ever need, but sectors 6 and 7 were the only places he spent his money. The slums were the one place where everyone understood what transactional relationships were. No Turk knew where Tseng _really_ got his tailored clothes dirty.

He chose a small and filthy dive bar adjacent to Seventh Heaven as his base for the night, watching as people got up to leave the moment he entered. The bartender, who didn’t know him, had poured him a drink by the time Tseng settled at the far side of the bar.

'I don't want any trouble,' he informed Tseng frankly, setting the glass down in front of the Turk.

'Fortunately for you,' Tseng said, lifting the glass, 'I do want scotch.' He sipped at it, slowly at first because he knew how to appreciate a good drink, but then he let the rest of it slither down his throat; a cool and anaesthetic line.

The bartender reached up to the top shelf, and pushed aside the bottles there to get at one right at the back. He put it down in front of Tseng. Tseng tipped his glass, and poured for himself.

'I have to warn you,' the bartender said before making himself scarce. 'Your type isn't well-liked around here.'

Tseng paused in his drinking. ‘Why do you think I’m here?’ He reached into his inner blazer pocket and withdrew a card; Shinra logo in deep red matte on thick black plastic that seemed to suck in the light. There was a credit number on it, but no name. The bartender took the card, put it in a safebox under the counter, and left Tseng along.

Tseng had two more drinks, enough for the humming under his veins to settle into a warm, constant thrum. He was aware that he looked flushed; he knew exactly how many drinks it took to get him there. There were two or three old geezers at the back of the dive that were steadfastly minding their own business and a good number of average-joe blue-collar slummers besides. Most were avoiding him as subtly as they knew how to: backs turned to the bar while their eyes stayed tracking Tseng’s movements.

There was one, though, and he was the one Tseng’d been waiting for. AVALANCHE-coded images (trees, coal, all the usual earth-hugging iconography) sewn onto his jacket shoulders; four drinks in and talking increasingly loudly of Shinra’s many and numerous evils; dirty looks thrown in Tseng’s direction every half a minute. Tseng made it a point to always have glass in hand when the man looked over.

He let himself loosen his tie. He let the hours slowly tick by; let the geezers let themselves out; let the blue-collar folk go home to their families; let the bartender cautiously creep out with a mop to start cleaning up. Treehugger had two friends, whose jobs were mainly to provide muscular support and to nod at everything he said.

Tseng eventually stopped with the glass altogether, and drank from the neck of the bottle the bartender had given him. He glanced down at his watch — five minutes to three in the morning.

The bartender cleared his throat and started stacking chairs upside down.

Tseng, back pressed comfortably against the wall and arm propped up on the barcounter, watched Treehugger. He said nothing. He just watched. He listened as Treehugger, well aware of his attentions, became increasingly agitated with this speech. A minute passed. Two. Three.

'What are you staring at me for?' Treehugger finally burst out. The bartender was suddenly nowhere to be found. Treehugger came over, stared hard at Tseng and Tseng's suit. 'You. You're a Turk.'

Tseng just _smiled_. He felt the expression settle on his face; an unfamiliar, wonderful, uncontrolled sensation. He said nothing.

'Aren't you?' Treehugger demanded. His two oak-sized friends came to join him. 'Even though you're,' he said, indicating at the mark on Tseng's forehead, ' _foreign_.’

'Wutai, actually,' Tseng corrected lightly.

'So you _aren’t_ a Turk?’ Treehugger asked, immediately confounded by the thought that someone from Wutai — Shinra’s beloved wartime enemy for half a decade or more — could work for Shinra. ‘You just suicidal or something, wearing that get up in the slums?’

'No,' Tseng said, rubbing his thumbnail against the lip of the bottle, savouring the coolness of the glass against his skin. 'I'm Shinra.'

There was a pause as Treehugger contemplated this. ‘Are you fucking with me?’ Treehugger eventually demanded. ‘What are you up to? Why have you been staring at me all night?’

'You're quite good-looking,' Tseng said, because Treehugger was, in a very classic, albeit dirty, fashion. High cheekbones, bright eyes, bushy-tailed. None of the glamours of the rich and the famous; just muscle from hard work and a guilelessness that Tseng, if he'd been in a different mood, might've found attractive enough to fuck.

Treehugger did not appreciate the overture. ‘Are you gunning for a fight?’ he snarled.

Tseng stood, calmly pushing his barstool back under the counter as he did so. ‘What do you think?’ he asked, arms hanging casually as his sides; muscles loose; body so utterly prepared because this, this is what he’d been taught to do, to become.

Treehugger swung a fist. Tseng, slightly inebriated, took a moment longer than he usually would’ve to step aside and swing the bottle in his left hand hard into Treehugger’s right ear. It shattered; glass shards cut and drew blood; the two friends came at him.

Tseng was hit twice in the stomach before he decided he was ready to play.

A heavy yellow glow filled the bar a moment later. Treehugger’s two friends slumped down, Slowed. Treehugger, clutching his ear, came rushing at Tseng, but stopped when the tip of Tseng’s gunbarrel found the centre of his forehead.

'You son of a bitch,' Treehugger swore, staying very still. 'That's not —'

'Fair?' Tseng smiled. 'No.' He whipped the gun across Treehugger's temples, just at the right angle, just at the right speed, just the way he knew how to, just the way he'd wanted to since he'd made the stupid decision to stand by the church doors on a sweaty summer night. Treehugger hit the ground, unconscious. Tseng grabbed him by the collar and hauled him upright.

He looked at the two friends. They stared back with terrified, unwilling eyes. ‘The effects of the Slow will fade in five minutes,’ he told them. ‘I take it you’ll both be going home to your beds?’

They blinked furiously at him.

Tseng looked around the empty bar. He rapped his gun on the countertop, and the bartender peeked up from where he’d barricaded himself down at the far side.

'Do you have a backroom?' Tseng asked him.

The bartender mutely pointed out behind the bar.

'Give me the keys,' Tseng said. He couldn't catch them when the bartender threw them at him; his coordination five drinks in was less than a hundred percent. He picked them up, and dragged Treehugger  — coming back to consciousness now and groaning —in the direction that the bartender had indicated.

Tseng locked the door of the backroom behind him, and set Treehugger down on a chair. He spotted a dusty roll of security bracelets - the sort used to identify minors too young to drink — on a shelf and used it to secure Treehugger’s wrists behind his back.

'Whaddaya,' Treehugger slurred, eyes unfocused. Tseng slapped him, which brought him back. 'Fuck! Fuck! What the fuck?'

Tseng, job done, retreated to the opposite side of the small room. He said, ‘You should consider answering the questions I have for you truthfully. Are you affiliated with AVALANCHE?’                         

Treehugger stared at him. ‘What the hell is AVALANCHE?’

Tseng indicated briefly at the insignia on Treehugger’s jacket. ‘I’m not blind, and I know what those mean. Let me ask you again: are you affiliated with AVALANCHE?’

'No!' spat Treehugger. 'How are you doing this to me just because of a _jacket?’_

'How you choose to dress yourself,' Tseng drawled, 'is very important. Your clothes say something about you.' The room began to glow. Treehugger's eyes widened. 'This is Manipulate,' Tseng told him. 'I'm very adept at using it.'

The glow filled the room.

'Are you affiliated with AVALANCHE?'

'N-n-n-n— y-yy-yyyyy—'

'How are you affiliated with AVALANCHE? Don't fight it. You'll choke on your own tongue.'

'Maaaargh!'

'Otherwise I'll make you choke on your own tongue. Again: how are you affiliated with AVALANCHE?'

'Mmmaah _aaagh_ my ex-girlfriend! She gave me those patches — I just sewed them on because I wanted to show her I —- _nnn_ _gh._ ’

'Who is she?'

Treehugger’s eyes were wide; Tseng could see the whites of them as he struggled against the Manipulate. The man had already had drool running down the front of his chin. It was an ugly sight that Tseng wanted to do violence to. The hum of Manipulate through his system would have made it so very easy.

Treehugger, to his credit, jammed his mouth shut as best he was able. He wasn’t lying, at least, but Tseng watched as his body betrayed him: his eyes looked out of the small window of the room, out at the neon signage that read _Seventh Heaven_ next door.

Tseng sighed. ‘You don’t even know who AVALANCHE was founded by.’ He released the man, who slumped forward and threw up all over his own lap, panting and heaving for a minute.

'Turks,' he swore at Tseng when he got his breath back, 'are as fucked up as any story I've ever heard of you.'

'The point of our existence,' Tseng said diffidently, re-holstering his gun and watching the man relax considerably at the sight, 'is making it so that every story you hear of us is _true_.’

'So this is just, what, part of the _job_?’ Treehugger asked, crying against his own will from the after-effects of the materia used on his already-drunk body. Tseng found it pitiful, but then again not many people had the kind of endurance that had been beaten into his body. Veld had been very thorough. Treehugger was not so well-trained. Tseng smelled piss in the air. ‘I don’t want to know what you do in your off hours, man,’ Treehugger wept.

Tseng blinked. 'Don't get me wrong,' he said. 'These _are_ my off hours.'

He spent a moment thinking. The alcohol was wearing off. He felt, still, a deep ache. He looked down at the man at his feet.

The room glowed again.

Twenty minutes later, Tseng was out in the front room, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and blazer missing. He was calmer. There was a faint smell of iron and acid in the air. The bartender was waiting. ‘There’s a man in the back — AVALANCHE,’ Tseng told him, since the bartender would, at some point, tell someone else who would tell someone else; the story multiplying until it became reality.

The bartender nodded, and reached for a PHS.

Tseng left through the front door, bringing the loosened knot of his tie back up to kiss the arch of his throat as he walked to the trains that would take him back to Shinra.


End file.
